The Wild Adventure Continues…

by The Mayor!

I Can’t Make This Sh** Up…

So there we were, safely ensconced within the cottage, & hopefully having bade farewell for good to our Stalking Moose friend. Sadly, however, being the terrible, rotten mother that I am, we had yet to eat dinner, & it was closing in on 9 p.m. Despite the fears regarding the moose who had escorted us all the way in to the lake, I was still inclined to take the easy way out & roast some weenies over the campfire. So out I went to start up the fire in the lingering daylight…& quickly realized there had been quite a bit of rain earlier. After trying in vain, & having the kids too scared to scour the forest for dry wood for me despite my relentless teasing about being total woosies, I fell back on an old trick used by all the drunken macho asses I’d crossed paths with over the years. Gasoline. Mind you, as a sober, responsible, adult mother of 4, I took great care in using this technique, & soon enough we had a nice little fire going. Once we were done with our weenies, we moved on to S’mores, & as darkness fell, the kidlets began to get a little antsy about being outside. I entertained them, hoping to occupy their thoughts with songs & stories, & we all began to relax in to the Cottage, East Lake! July 2010 431 cottage life. As I snuggled with one particular Yard Ape, I asked one of the Rug Rat’s to take our picture. With nothing but the glow of the fire to guide us, I was telling her she’d have to point & guess while taking the photo…when suddenly, out of the darkness, the cookies on the chair beside me were yanked away & began crazily running off in to the woods, seemingly floating above the ground! I jumped up yelling “GET THEM!”, dumping small child off my lap, while everyone began screaming, & we all gave chase. The Boy was in the lead, with his iPod & it’s flashlight app lighting the way, & now he’s hollering back to us that it’s a racoon. Racoon??!! That dude had mad ninja skills, we never saw ‘im comin’!! We reacquire the now empty cookie package, the racoon is gone, & we’re howling in laughter at our newly christened Ninja Racoon friend for having gotten the best of us. Better still, the Rug Rat with the camera, in all the excitment, had hit the video button, & depsite the darkness, there was now a perfect soundtrack of our Ninja Racoon encounter!

Ninja Racoon Strikes With Stealth & Cunning Befitting…

…well, a ninja, where’d ya think I was going with that??! I know, you’re thinking, “Geez Mayor, so what, it’s a racoon, you’re in the woods, what’s the big frikkin’ deal??”. However, if you read my first wild adventure post, starring the Stalking Moose, you would know that it’s actually pretty rare to have close encounters with the wild life, this was now our second encounter on our first evening there, & THIS story isn’t over yet…so shut your judgemental, opinionated pie hole & just listen, kay??!! (Not you guys…that dude, over there, the one from Yemen who has nothing better to do than troll blogs & judge & opine the rest of us). Now I have a bunch of kidlets who are scared of both the moose, the racoon, & what they consider to be the viable threat of bears, so off we go to bed. Night falls hard in the middle of nowhere… “dark” is an understatement…enveloping blackness? pitch black? can’t see your hand in front of your face? Slightly more applicable. This is still unnerving to me, even at forty. But,ya know, I put on my big girl Hannah Montana jammies (yes really, shut up!), & settled in to listen to the mice scritching away, a familiar, & almost comforting, sound, assuring me that I hadn’t been swallowed alive by the blackness around me. I bolted awake sometime around 3 a.m., though opening my eyes was a useless endeavor in such darkness…& frankly, I didn’t want to see the mutant mice capable of making the tremendous racket that had awakened me! I sat there in bed, frozen with fear, barely breathing, as my mind wrapped around the fact that this was NOT the mice…someONE was in the kitchen! I know damn well it’s not a kidlet, the bedrooms are beside each other & open in to one main living space, with the kitchen at the far end. Since I can’t see even a pin point of light, & they harbour their own fear of dark that dark, there’s not a chance in hell one of them is banging around out there alone. And given our horribly remote location, the best my terrified brain could come up with was a crazy ass psycho ax wielding killer scrounging for victims…because in the wilds of cottage country, no one can hear you scream. As I curse the fact that it’s on me to protect the the brats, I grab for my flashlight. Holy f***, it doesn’t work! SH**! But in the process of fumbling around looking feeling for it, I realize that not just The Baby is in bed with me, but there’s The Boy sprawled across the end where he must have fallen asleep reading…apparently with my flashlight. So I kick him wake him up. In hushed whispers, he too hears the racket, but surprisingly, is far less afraid than I…likely since, at 12, his limited experiences didn’t include Jason or Freddie…& offers up a game plan. He’s going to skirt over to the next doorway & get the flashlight from their room, & we’ll do a loud, stompy, kamikaze run in to the kitchen…’cause I told him that would make the mutant mice scatter, keeping thoughts of ax killers unspoken. No idea what the hell good it was gonna do for the ax wielding psycho though, aside from possible discombobulation. As he sidles out to grab his flashlight, the shame sets in at my allowing my son to draw fire over me, so I plunge in to the bowels of darkness in a full stompy run towards the kitchen, making what I’m sure was a Mama lion roar of a noise…or maybe just a frightened squeaking sound, I don’t recall. The Boy was two steps behind me, with the benefit of light, & for the second time that night, I hear him hollering, “IT’S A RACOON!”. Are you freakin’ kidding me??!! I stop dead in my tracks, not able to comprehend how Ninja Racoon was now in our kitchen…that question was quickly answered as The Boy chased him out the same way he had come in…through the now very busted up window. The fridge, stove, & grill are all on one wall, & all run on propane. For carbon monoxide safety, the small window above the giant restaurant grill is kept open. Outside the window, sits the very tall propane tanks. Our Ninja friend had climbed up them, ripped off the screen, & found his way in. We shut & latch the window, then, chattering excitedly from adrenaline, relief, & disbelief, we scout out another window we can leave open that our little troublemaker won’t be able to get at.

The Morning Light…

…& what fresh hell is this?? Ninja Racoon had been back. Foiled by the latched window, he had done some serious damage to the frame in his attempts to gain entry. Jackass. Our first full day, & already I had dealt with more “adventure” than seemed plausible. And so it was that, later, as we relaxed on the dock, I was not the least bit surprised to hear the kids yell out “TURTLE! MOMMY, A Cottage, East Lake! July 2010 169 MONSTER TURTLE!”…well of course there was suddenly a giant snapping turtle taking up residence under the dock for the first time in my forty years up there. In fact, it had become so ridiculously silly that we turned it in to a game, throwing out outrageous guesses as to what we’d spot next, & of course, affording them all appropriate nicknames. What wasn’t nearly as much fun was the fact that said Monster Turtle made numerous appearances, popping his head out from under our dock & instilling a fair degree of apprehension over swimming. We all became very adept at jumping OUT from the dock & having a ”look out” for our mad scrambles back up the ladder. Worse, Ninja Racoon continued his nocturnal burgling attempts, both at our nightly campfire & at our window, doing more & more damage, & causing grave concerns that the latch simply wasn’t going to hold.

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Cottage, East Lake! July 2010 443

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Cottage, East Lake! July 2010 480 Finally I was forced to MacGyver a blockade, breaking down a skid I found under the cottage & reusing the boards & nails to bar off the entire window & sill until the next person was up to bring the materials for proper repairs, & possibly, a trap to relocate our pesky friend. Apparently, I needn’t have worried…when my aunt & her family arrived, the day after I left, they saw hide nor hair of Ninja Racoon…or Monster Turtle…or Stalking Moose. Apparently this sh** only happens to me…’cause that’s how I roll.